Online blog written by a female with Asperger Syndrome.

I have NEVER missed an exam in my life before. However, today I woke up far too late to get there. I will be allowed to do it next month I’m told. I have been honest about my circumstances with my tutor (even though it was hard due to what I’d been through), so they know that I wasn’t doing it to be ‘difficult’. I’m also not feeling well, which isn’t helping. I have a doctors appointment later on this week. I’ve had to wait a month for that so had to cope with illness in the meantime myself. I just feel really odd and the heat hasn’t helped. Physically and mentally I just feel so worn out. I do need the support from mental health teams, but my awful experiences of the system has put me off completely. The only place the GP ever refers me to is the forensics mental health team because of my ‘offending’ which is actually my autism but things are just ‘black and white’ to the system and also members of the general public.

That hasn’t helped me because of the attitude of those teams. They do not listen to the patients, they make their own assumptions about motives and reasonings behind your issues. I had anger issues because of how I have been treated growing up anyway, they just add to them basically telling me I meant nothing to people and I should just ‘go away and hide in a corner somewhere away from others’. Admittedly, this attitude was a few years ago before people started really opening up about mental illness issues and getting their campaigns heard. In the past, I have been to professionals in the mental health service for help and all they did was made me feel like a worthless piece of sh*t. I know that they’ve always wanted to diagnose me with a Personality Disorder. However, I disagree with that. Anyone that was treated like I was as a youngster would present with those types of traits even if they didn’t actually have the condition.

As much as I’d love to believe that there is real change (as I’ve been led to believe via a social network page for Leics Partnership) happening within the way the mental health services are doing things locally. I still have a very hard time actually believing it. I even voiced my opinion to that effect on their twitter page. The problem is I was labelled a criminal for things relating to my Autism condition. Therefore, that makes my primary label a criminal and allows the NHS/council to effectively ignore my Autism. And, due to the shortage of money in the UK at this moment in time, they will refuse to support people with forms of disabilities using any excuse.

This is absolutely no reflection on those that work on the lower levels in the NHS etc. These issues are more to do with the CEO’s and other Management who don’t even have contact with the actual patients deciding who is deserving just by looking at case notes. I’ve already proven by my own case notes that they aren’t always correct. Therefore, this opens a can of worms for potential serious errors in cases where the right information hasn’t been recorded. An unrelated example is, a mix up in regards to allergies to medications during operations etc which could and has already caused patients deaths.

As someone with a mental illness affecting their brain (whatever else I may get diagnosed with), I’d like to be treated with dignity rather than the hostile aversions that I have previously experienced since I was a very young teenager. That feeling of enmity from a lot of mental health professionals (e.g a psychologist I met a few years ago who categorically just surmised that I was a stalker because that was her field of expertise, but knew absolutely nothing about Autism as backed up by her credentials) have really put me off asking for help or seeking any type of treatment. In actual fact, I knew exactly what my issues were and they stem from having a Mother who is emotionally cold. I’ve got myself into situations is because I was looking for a locum to fill the void of not having the kind of Mother that I needed. There was no nefarious scheme concealed in any of my actions. I have an innocuous ingenue psyche. Any form of mental illness doesn’t always carry a likelihood of risk to the person or others. The behaviour is just seen as baffling to those that don’t have brains that are slightly wired differently.

In all honesty though, I do need something because I just want to sleep all the time and I don’t know if the diazepam I’m getting off the internet has anything dangerous in it. I have to get referred to a psychiatrist to get them officially prescribed because the GP’s don’t have the authority to prescribe specialist medication for things like psychiatric conditions. I do feel like I will eventually take my own life because I feel stuck, tired and hurt by others judgments. I just see no future being any different. And, financially, I’m going to be struggling for the rest of my life because no one will employ someone with a record and a disability. Therefore, I can never progress in life. And that makes me rather want to be dead in all honesty. The crisis team in this area is absolutely ghastly when I was referred to them going through the court case. I tried to overdose and they still ignored me. This is why I say that I am very sceptical about these ‘improvements’ they’re stating they’re making and reluctant to get help.